*For the previous chapters, please go here. These are posted first draft, as the brain dictates to the fingers which are remarkably stupid. Also there will be inconsistencies because until September or so, the timing on these is wonky, and I’ll forget stuff between posts. Eventually it will be cleaned up and fixed just before page is made secret/taken down and the book is published. At that time I will take lists of typos or volunteers to proof read. For now, it’s written in a hurry, usually an hour before it goes up. And, let me remind you, it’s free – SAH*

 

The Wolf Returns

Michael felt as though his head were reeling.

To an extent he — the part of him that was charitable at least — understood the frustration of the young man and how he wished they would simply do what he told them to.

To another extent– To another extent, the truth was that while trying to test one of his inventions, he’d been shanghaied into an adventure he’d not signed up for, and the idea that he should now risk his life on some ill-defined magical road for the sake of people so wholly unconnected with him made him feel both tired and put upon.

But he didn’t know how to express his problem without sounding rude, or as though he didn’t care for Al who had, in fact, saved his life twice over. Or had almost probably saved his life. While embroiling him in the most horrendous adventure, of course, but all of it — he was sure — unmeant.

As she told the young man how he was being rude, and sounded like she’d lost all patience, he put out a hand.  “No, I understand,” he said.  “It is just that I did not mean to be embroiled in any of this. I did not choose it,” he looked towards Geoff.  “And it sounds to me as though your brothers, with far better knowledge of the situation just got lost, so I can’t understand what I can be expected to do.” He realized he sounded whiny, something he was prone to do, at least to his own ears. Chalk it up to being the much younger son of — de fact if not in law — three boys, whose two older sons were far more powerful in their own ways.  He didn’t have to like it to recognize it. But mostly, he guessed he sounded tired, which he was.

Al must have picked up on the implication. She gave him the sort of look women were likely to give men when they over-exert. Michael had seen it from his twin, Caroline, who was bound to think she was much older than him — not a bare minute — and therefore entitled to looking after him as a second mother. But most of all, he saw it from housekeepers and nurses, and even maids, who all tended to think — he thought it was distributed as household rules to new hires — that he worked too much at his machines, and didn’t eat enough or take enough healthy exercise.

Al gave him that look, then looked back at her brother.  “Before we can decide what to do or how, we must have a bath, and clothes, and food too. You must understand we’ve been precipitated from adventure to disaster for what I would judge to be whole day, and we’re not going to set off on any magical road without resting and eating.”  She paused.  “At least I am not. Lord Michael is free to make his own decision.”

Geoff looked angry, or maybe puzzled.  Without knowing the young man better, Michael could not determine exactly what the frown that cross his face meant.  He opened his mouth as if to speak, but what came out of his mouth was “blert.”  It was exactly the same sound as you’d expect at the beginning of a trumpet fanfare.

Then, before Michael’s shocked eyes, the lad hiccuped, hiccuped again, made a sound that amounted to “blurt!” but which was not made by any vocal organs, but rather as if his entire body had imploded inward.  And trumped again.  Only the creature trumpeting now was a swan — had to be a swan, geese didn’t make that sound — standing in a welter of male clothes.  He put out his neck, and trumpeted again, indignantly.

At the same time there was the found of footsteps approaching the cottage door, and presently the door swung inward.

Michael had once seen a portrait of Tristan Blackley.  It was one of the very early portraits, where magic had first allowed the affixing of an image to paper, but it tended to fade and lose sharpness over a very short time.  It had been copied, many times over, in pencil and woodcut, and appeared in every schoolbook, under the heading of “Tristan Blackley, the father of modern magic.”

It showed, sketchily, a thin man with a patrician nose and heavy eyebrows, and a mass of unruly, fanning out dark hair.

Only–

Add several decades, make the hair white, and emphasize the nose.  Also give the nose a wound at the very tip that looked like someone had hit with a red-hot poker.  Or a fireball.  And you’d have the same Tristan Blackley.  Michael suppressed a sigh and told himself that hiding behind Albinia would be a despicable act of cowardice.

The man looked upset, very upset.  And his glare favored Michael, Albinia and the goo– swan with no mitigation.

To Michael’s relief, he was wrapped in a tattered, disreputable looking grey cloak. Seeing a legendary magician in the altogether was no part nor parcel of Michael’s ambition, frankly.

He said “Good evening,” but in the tone he might mean “The better to eat you with.”

The swan trumpeted indignantly and Blackley answered, in a mordant tone, “No doubt, Geoff, but I thought I was more suited to explaining what must be done and why.”

The swan made a half muttered “trumpet” sound that managed to convey sullen acquiescence.

Albinia, as far as Michael could see through the corner of his eye, without turning, at first looked surprised, shocked, then dejected and had now hunched into herself and become unreadable.

Tristan Blackley’s eyes, just as intelligent and piercing as in his portrait turned back to the pair of them, “I presume,” he said, “You got some version of our intent, but have not yet understood the whole.”

Michael cleared his throat, but before he could speak, Tristan hiccuped, and Michael fell back on his left foot, ready to leap in front of Al and protect her should this person turn into the wolf again.

Instead, Tristan covered his mouth, “Pardon me,” he said.  “Voles. Worst part of this business, I swear. Very erratic diet.  And now, what do you wish to know?”

Albinia stepped forward then, managing to project much older than her years, and said, “No, papa.  Before we wish to know anything at all, we must have baths, food, clean clothing and probably a bed. Because you are violating every law of hospitality of simple humanity and this will not stand.”

Tristan opened his mouth, closed it and swallowed.  Something like both shock and fear crossed his features.  Michael expected him to say something unkind, but all he said was, “Oh, very well!” in the tone of a great concession.

 

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

FROM C. J. CARELLA:  Twilight Templar: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 1).

 

Ben sat down to play a brand-new MMORPG, Eternal Journey Online. Next thing he knew, he had been transformed into his character, first-level Paladin Hawke Lightseeker, and found himself in a corpse-filled cavern complex crawling with monsters and undead. Armed with a sentient sword, Hawke must learn the rules of a reality where magic and power-leveling are as real as swords and knives, and where you only get a limited number of respawns before you die for good.

Follow Hawke as he explores the mysterious Common Realm, meets new friends and foes, battles to survive, and learns more about his growing power and inner strength.
Note to LitRPG Fans: This novel concentrates primarily on action-adventure, with a focus on power-leveling and learning new magic and class subsystems. Future novels will deal with town and stronghold management. There is also a harem (fade-to-black, non explicit) subplot that plays a part in the story without detracting from it.
Sample chapters can be found at my website: http://cjcarella.com/twilight_templar_the_eternal_journey_book_one

 

FROM C. J. CARELLA: Lord of the Dead: A LitRPG Saga (The Eternal Journey Book 2).

The adventure continues! Hawke Lightseeker, Twilight Templar, prepares to confront the Necromancer who feeds on the souls of his fellow Eternals. Before he can lead his band of adventurers into the dread mountain fastness, however, Hawke must conquer a Lair, help organize the town of Orom, and raise his strength in a series of increasingly more difficult Quests.

FROM IAIN MURRAY:  The Socialist Temptation.

Socialism is tempting, seductive, alluring. It comes in many forms and speaks in many different ways. It appeals to people who value fairness, who value freedom, and who value security. It comes in many varieties, sometimes clothing itself in the dress of nationalism, sometimes in the garb of environmentalism. Yet there is one single, unifying feature – subjugation of the individual to the collective. While Americans have always been skeptical of socialism, even in the progressive and New Deal eras, that is beginning to change. Large numbers of Americans now express admiration for socialism, and similar numbers are critical of the free enterprise system. The problem is particularly acute among America’s young people. This is not the first time we have been here. In 1977, when America was deep in an economic malaise, Ronald Reagan gave a speech in which he wondered, “Whatever happened to free enterprise?” Noting that the free enterprise system “for 200 years made us the light of the world,” he warned that freedom is “never more than one generation away from extinction.” He took the lead in preserving it for the previous generation. It is time for this generation to take up the torch. Reagan framed the defense of freedom as first and foremost a communications challenge. Today, a field of study known as cultural cognition theory understands that our political choices are guided by certain values. Americans generally fall into one of three value groups, valuing fairness (egalitarians), freedom (libertarians), and security (conservatives) respectively. The Socialist Temptation is an attempt to meet the modern version of the communications challenge posed by Ronald Reagan. There are reasons why socialism appeals to each of these value groups. The Socialist Temptation tackles these reasons head on and responds with a vigorous case for free enterprise as better matching American values.

FROM MARY CATELLI:  Treachery And Spells

Two novellas of magic and adventure. . . Caught between pirates who would force him to use wizardry in their aid, and a king who would force him to spy, Alik will need every scrap of wits and wizardry to forge his own path. A curse of ill luck leaves Perriel and Gareth trapped in an endless winter, with only the faintest hope of breaking free.

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you have an original vignette, you post that as a new reply. If you are commenting on someone’s vignette, then post that as a reply to the vignette. Comments — this is writing practice, so comments should be aimed at helping someone be a better writer, not at crushing them. And since these are likely to be drafts, don’t jump up and down too hard on typos and grammar.

If you have questions, feel free to ask.

Your writing prompt this week is: ADAPTABLE

I promise.
I’m sorry. I’m actually recovered today, but slept a lot and then had Huns dinner at Pete’s kitchen.
Chapter tomorrow.

Having dealt with what I’m sure is yet the same troll in the comments, telling us that without Marxism the “upper classes” wouldn’t give a fig for the lower classes, world without end, connected with something that has been going on in my head all morning.

Let me explain to begin with that I feel very ill this morning, so this is bound to be a little disjointed and I’m going to try to keep it short.

On the ill: Almost for sure not winnie the flu, as I have no fever OR cough, but all three of us in the house hold have been feeling tired/sleepy/generally out of it, with occasional nausea.  Nausea is the only thing that racks to Winnie the Flu, and honestly, it’s not enough.  It could all be psychological. I’d like to drag son for a walk as that might help. My sense of taste and smell come and go, but for me that tracks to stress/auto-immune. Also note “come and go” sometimes several times a day.  This morning I couldn’t smell cat pee. Right now I’m overwhelmed by the smell of the cleaner I used on it, even though it’s downstairs and across the house.  So….

No clue what it is. This sort of extreme tiredness often tracks to my being stressed/autoimmune acting up.  But in this case the rest of the family is going through it, as well.  Eh.You know, lockdown does weird things to immune systems, and though we’re not, we’re effectively on lockdown since Fash-Boots-Polis instituted mandatory masks. Because I never know if I’ll be allowed in with face shield (masks send me immediately into accute respiratory distress but stores don’t seem aware of exceptions) I just stay in the house.

Anyway, this morning I was reading a book from a non-woke author who has been pounded in reviews for daring to tell the truth about pre-conquest Mexican history, and yet, in analyzing previous Mexican/indigenous societies he speaks repeatedly of “class warfare” and seems to think it’s a normal part of civilization.

Which made me pound my head repeatedly on the breakfast table.

Class warfare isn’t a thing. It was never a thing until Marx brought it to the vocabulary. Hell and damnation, it wasn’t even a thing in the French revolution.  No, I’m serious.

The fact that some people have more and some have less has never caused war or the fall of any civilization.  What causes war or the fall of civilization is closing pathways to “having more” to large segments of the population.

The French revolution wasn’t class warfare. Yes, aristo, aristo a la lanterne.  But what it actually was was the violent reorganization of a society whose ruling elite had become obsolete and unable to adapt to new economic circumstances, and also who refused to let society change normally.

Which I can completely understand is something that would make our current self-proclaimed ruling elites uncomfortable, since that’s exactly what they’re doing.

French aristocrats were often not the wealthiest people around. In fact, their means of wealth had been falling for over a century, and most of them were deeply indebted. What they had by law, though, was power over everyone BORN under them.  It wasn’t economic, but state power, ultimately.  And they not only refused to relinquish it, allow the bourgeois (often far wealthier) into their circles, but kept coming up with more and better ways to keep the “interlopers” out.

They were in fact doing what a lot of our soi disant “elites” are doing, trying to silence dissent and return to a way of life that hasn’t been normal or healthy for a century or so.  (The left’s ideal time is the 1930s for instance. Only with more sex stuff, and — in their heads but nor really since they’re now for straight up apartheid under the guise of safe spaces — racial integration.)

But it wasn’t “classes” in the sense that Marx preached them. It had nothing to do with wealth, income levels, or daily occupation. (The nobility QUITE lacked means of production, that being part of the problem, in the industrial age.)

It was more accurately castes: i.e. privileges given by the government depending on the condition of your birth.  Which, again, is what the left is trying to institute here.

Anyway, there has never been “class struggle” in any history ever, in the Marxist sense.  That was Marxist…. Well…. Marx was a high functioning autist and invented patterns even where they didn’t exist. And he wanted to plug in to the romantic ethos of the time and make the industrial revolution bad. So he came up with that load of fecal matter. It means nothing.

If you believe in Marxist “classes” and “Class warfare” and you’re not a leftist, kindly consider you’ve been profoundly mal-educated.

(If you are a leftist, you’ve also been profoundly mal-educated, but you like it, you believe in it, and by gum you’re going to wallow in it like a pig in muck.)

History could more accurately be described as a battle of memes.

Humans live not by bread alone. Regardless of how food and the other necessary goods of society are produced, that’s not what makes people happy/unhappy, etc.  It’s the story in their heads about the society and what makes it tick that counts. And the story always lags reality. And is often used for the rulers’ purposes.

Hence the romantics were an attempt to make life pre-industrial revolution wonderful. And convince peasants living in rural submission was better.

At some point, though, the story breaks, when its fit to reality (it’s NEVER 100% because human life is fluid) becomes glaringly broken.  This is when revolutions happen.

For instance, it was easy for rural French peasants to groan under the oppression of the nobility, because there was a unified narrative that you were supposed to serve in the place you were born to. And because honestly, the noblemen were different enough so as to be another breed, almost.

It was when the industrial revolution advanced enough that there was a vast group of wealthy people who were told they were inferior “by reason of birth” that the wheels came off. Particularly as the bankrupt nobility tried to push them back into rural subjection.

In the case of the book I’m reading, he talked about pre-Mexican peasants rebelling against the priests who lived so much better, because class warfare.  This is not real. Or serious. It’s more likely they rebelled (we don’t know for sure, as we have no written accounts) because the priests failed in their role according to societal narrative.

I.e. they were supposed to keep bad things away, and didn’t.

In the same way the current covidiocy and intentional crash of the economy is an attempt to reverse the clock and to implant the narrative that “we’re all in this together” thereby giving the Marxist intelligentsia of the west control over the story in people’s heads.

“The heroic people and their heroic leaders defeated the virus with the power of government and therefore the government must have more power and narratives must come from the top and be unified.”

This is their preferred narrative. It leaks out with things like DeBolshevik wanting a ticker tape parade “when we defeat” the virus. Or their being really upset at Trump for not falling in line with “government is the way to defeat this” or imposing unified solutions from the top.

It’s not going to work. In fact, it’s hitting hardest those places they have full control of: Arts, entertainment, news, education–  What they’re actually doing is destroying their areas of power to gain power. Which is a ghost dance typical of what happens when an “elite” displaced by a change in circumstances which makes their story no longer fit tries to hold on to power.

The more they do, the more they flail around, the harder the fall will be.  Which frankly is scaring the shit out of me, as I think it’s going to be guillotines and terror. Not their fake attempts at terror, but the real one, where people Have.Had.Just.About.Enough and have no way to make the bullshit stop except a massive spasm of violence.

This is the way civilizations DO fall.

But the picture in everyone’s head right now is “classes” in “permanent war” which is an invention of Marx and has no contact with reality.

History is not permanent class warfare.  History IS permanent change.  And when the story in people’s heads doesn’t match the narrative, a time comes when it is reset VIOLENTLY.

The Marxist narrative was never right — which is why it brings death, starvation and destruction wherever it gets power — but it made sense to people in a regimented post-industrial world.  It also poisoned them for any practical solution, but hey, the ruling classes could USE it to get more power.  So it worked, after a fashion.

Only in the information age it doesn’t. And people are buying it less and less. Ad know all the ways in which it breaks.  But still retain fragments of it in their head. Which means as it falls apart, it will fall faster, harder and more violently.

The more it has penetrated everything and cued people for the wrong reaction, the more violent the outcome.

But screaming the story louder, or having seeded it everywhere doesn’t stop its fall. It just makes the fall more violent.

Reality is a bitch. It always wins.

And the current “elite” inability to understand that, or even to process that they are in fact in charge and not bold rebels (which their Marxist upbringing insists they are) is setting us up for a “blood to our ankles” situation.

Pray that I’m wrong.

What seems like centuries ago, and was in fact in the last century, after the fall of the USSR, I watched as the wheels came off Science Fiction short stories, in a sort of mini-fit-of-insanity.

I kept bouncing between being horrified and being amused, all of it worsened by my being pregnant/nursing/raising toddlers which, for those who have never experienced such a state is its own form of altered reality.

So, what happened from my POV was this — note that things might be different from how you remember it, due to how I experienced things.  This is not to say (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT) that reality was different for me, only that I experienced things in a different sequence due to spending some of the time in another country, and coming back and experiencing as new things that had gone on here for a while —

When I fell in love with SF/F in Portugal there were no magazines available in the language, and the books were available in jumbled ways.  This is because Portuguese publishers always published things in such tight batches that — like now — older releases (particularly) by popular authors disappeared. Unless you could find them in used bookstores, in forgotten tobaconnists in tiny villages you were passing through (how I found Glory Road) and/or in the back of your friend’s grandfather’s closet, while helping people clear the house.

This means that not only didn’t I have a clear view (still don’t except very vaguely) of trends/currents in sf/f, but I came it all at once, from pulp to new wave, and read it all uncritically and without knowing which was more recent. (What this did to my science education and my understanding of world history is something different. You should have seen my teacher when she realized I thought WWIII (nuclear) HAD happened “about fifty years ago.”)

But I HEARD of science fiction magazines.  And though this wasn’t my plan, exactly, on coming to the US and finding the little town in Ohio where I was an exchange student had an entire shelf of Sf/F, that I could buy Heinlein books I never heard of at the local(ish) Waldens, and that ZOMG Analog still existed and published every month, I immediately subscribed to Analog, Asimov’s and possibly others (look, it was 40 years ago and I’ve been busy.)

My months became determined by when those arrived in the mail. I.e. I’d grab the magazine from the mailbox and lose the next day as I read it cover to cover, which means I learned to do my homework early/late so that I could work around it.

A lot of the stories I read in those magazines were of the “the Soviets win the war/we destroy the Earth” nuclear war variety, and then we have to live/survive.

It didn’t strike me as wrong, precisely. I mean, we were “all waiting for the hammer to fall” right? I was a little upset there weren’t a ton of space operas and colonization stories, simply because I had enjoyed those, but not enough to be really upset.  Just a “oh, I wish.”

At the end of the year I went back and after an epic bureaucratic battle with the college system in Portugal (they really aren’t set up for stepping out of the system for a year) I went to college, and taught part time, and developed a social life.  So, things got rather busy.

Four years and a bit later, when I got married and came back to the US, I again subscribed to SF Mags, and at the time got irritated that all of the stories had a slant of “the west loses out”.

Okay this isn’t true and is a gross simplification, but I found myself little by little not reading those very expensive magazines, because they all seemed to me to paint a picture of the future amounting to “the future is worse than the present. Also rusty.”

There were still stories I liked, but not enough for me to remember this much later.  (Though some of the authors stuck and I found their novels later.)

Over the next six years and fertility treatments (talk of hormonal insanity) I popped in and out of reading sf/f as the spirit moved.  Some friends recommended epic fantasy series, but this was never precisely my thing, and I also found a lot of books I didn’t know were decades old and enjoyed those, while at the same time also reading a lot of mystery.  Oh, and history. And– whatever.

But I remember the years after the USSR fell, because I had a kid that year, and another 3 years and change later, and we moved to Colorado, I joined my first writers’ group and subscribed to Writer’s magazine and Writers’ Digest.

These events are tied together because getting pregnant meant deciding not to work outside the home, moving to Colorado destroyed my nascent translation business (look, here’s the thing, pre-internet it was local contacts, which I was JUST forming) and anyway, I HATED translation (don’t ask. I don’t actually hate the work. I just hated doing the work necessary to establish as a freelancer.  And it wasn’t QUITE my thing.  I like puzzles, I just don’t LIVE to solve them. I’d met other translators and become aware I was an odd one for the profession.) and my husband had said “Well, you always wanted to write for a living, so why don’t you try it while the kids are little?” (It SEEMED like a good idea at the time.)

We won’t go into how green I was. Very. Let’s say that.  So the ideas that you should a) first break into short stories seemed logical (it wasn’t) b) buy magazines to figure out what they published was mind-blowing (because I’d been raised with the idea of the genius around whom the world conforms. S, if I were good enough, I’d be published, no matter what the publisher wanted.)

So somewhere, while pregnant with #2 son I re-discovered sf/f magazines.  (We’d also just popped out of a phase where we could barely afford to eat, and finally had money for mags.)

And–

Dear Lord, what was I reading?

What I was reading was the same stories I’d read as an exchange student, now with a very thin veneer to explain why the nuclear war had happened and the USSR had won.

I remember being somewhere between horrified and amused.

It all culminated in a short story called The West Is Red, which was very well written and I THINK (I can’t be assed to look, actually) won all sorts of awards, and whose central conceit was that economics in a parallel world worked differently and therefore the Soviet model worked better.

I read the story — it was well written — and then sat there, mouth half open, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

And decided the field had suffered a psychotic break.

Look, economics COULDN’T work differently, because economics, while a science, is a science influenced by a bunch of other sciences and the reality we live in.

While I can see that SF/F does that a lot, and have done it myself, with say alternate history, because history is too complex to say “if this didn’t happen that that would.” (There are always a million factors, some of which we don’t even know.) So we write high-level and ignore the details and dance really fast before they see what we’re dancing in front of….

Positing that top-down planned economies would be superior in another universe demanded…. a lot of things, starting with a species so different from humans that we wouldn’t understand them period. It also demanded different arithmetic and mathematics, all of which (behavior and math) are parts of economics that cannot be changed without changing the very fabric of the universe to such an extent you couldn’t have A story, let alone that story.

But I understood why the story appealed, and why it had become popular (besides being well written.)

I had at around that time come across something that said that after 45 people don’t change their fundamental view of the world, and I understood that was the problem.  You see, the generation before mine, the boomers who were then in charge of cultural institutions and academic institutions had grown up not just convinced that the USSR was superior, their economy better than ours, but that they WOULD WIN.

This was true on both sides of the isle, which is why eve republican presidents tinkered with price controls and regulations, but didn’t change the system. One way or another, planned economies won out in the end, right? The future had less freedom. The USSR won. It was all a matter of how we got there.

And then Reagan. Reagan and his crazy ideas, which if you remember, couldn’t work.  But did. And the USSR fell. And we found what a hollow, sad thing it had been, because PLANNED ECONOMIES and central control don’t and can’t work.

Only the people who’d bet their lives on it, the cultural vanguard of the generation that made “come the revolution” a saying couldn’t change. They were too old and had bet their entire lives on this believe system.

So instead of changing they found various excuses for why reality was wrong, history was wrong, and they were still going to win.

That short story, now that I look back, is perfectly emblematic of that psychotic break, that primal scream of irrationality.

They took the fight to watermelon “ecology”and bizarre implementations of language controls which were supposed to become thought controls.  They came up with the idea of making Marxism apply “of course, not to macro society and economics, but to specific fields” and applying Marxist analysis to literature and art and all sorts of crazy things.

And they raised their kids, the echo boom, that way.

In many ways, locked in their primal “but it can’t be true” scream, they started an attack on reality itself. And taught their kids that reality was optional.

Of course it’s not.  Which is why every field they controlled then is now in a state of total collapse, or being replaced.

But they haven’t given up because they — and the kids they raised to be quite literally reality-denying-psychotics — can’t give up.  To give up is to admit their view of the world was wrong. They can’t do that. And their kids couldn’t find reality with two hands and a seeing eye dog, because they’ve been told it doesn’t exist, and if it did, it would be oppressive.

Which is why we find ourselves facing people who tell us that math is oppressive and colonialist.

And also attempting to institute a system of apartheid and racial castes under the impression these are civil rights.

None of it makes sense, unless you realize that the “luminaries” of “intellectual” life might as well be locked in a padded cell screaming in a non-existent language at the oppression of reality.

The entire insanity that is 2020 was foretold by the fact that the science fiction establishment saw nothing wrong in positing that economics could work differently in another universe, so that they could have been right all along.

They’re not the majority.  They still, largely, have control of the “official” culture, though frankly they’re so bloody incompetent that we’re starting to do things under/over/around that actually count for more.

They’re also not really effective, in any way.

But they have enough power to give everyone the impression the universe is coming apart at the seams.

It’s not of course. THEIR universe is coming apart at the seams, because it was never the real world, but a construct of pseudo-intellectual-superiority, unearned smirking and USSR agit-prop.

Reality is that which doesn’t go away no matter how much you wish it to or scream at it, or denounce it as evilracistpatriarchaloppressive!

Which is why in the end we win, they lose.

But dear Lord, the screams and the literal poo-flinging is getting irritating.

‘

So, in a stunning demonstration of lack of reading comprehension, some rando left me a comment on one of the posts this week. It had a million (highly insane) links, give or take, so of course, it wasn’t approved. Besides, I think it was a first comment, so it was pending anyway.

In the post I mentioned I don’t think it will be as bad here as it will be in Europe. In the context it was obvious what I meant is that I don’t (at this point. More idiotic lockdowns or whatever these crazy people come up with next) envision us having actual starvation in the US.

The reasons for this are obvious: look, we are a continent-wide nation and also have some of the most productive farms in the world. In fact we can feed ourselves and most of the world. The fact that international trade has stalled and international charity is difficult in the middle of the aristo-imposed covidiocy doesn’t affect our food supply.  Food distribution might be something else, but Americans are actually contrary to various rumors the most generous people on Earth. Also, the most adaptable.

Most of us have been making arrangements to ensure we don’t starve (we really don’t expect much of government) and those who haven’t will probably still be taken care of.

Anyway, the first shock of this comment was the fact this person was disputing that America was better off (in the matter of feeding everyone) than Europe, because “no one accepts American bonds as collateral, not even for overnight loans.”

Uh, besides the fact that I know this is bullshit (yes, okay, our monetary system is jacked up. So is most of the world right now. And we lost less to covidiocy than… oh, Germany) because if it weren’t — if the world really stopped keeping dollars as world-currency — we’d already have collapsed completely as far as monetary value, the idea that he was disputing food or lack thereof with monetary system was almost awe-inspiring stupidity.

He then went on to reassure me even the poorest EU countries had access to cheap loans.  What? Are these people such complete nincompoops and children that they don’t understand the concept of “things money can’t buy”?  As in, if there isn’t enough food to go around, I don’t care what you’re offering for food. There isn’t any to buy.

Apparently the AOC school of economics now not only thinks you can print money indefinitely without affecting the value of money, but that money itself is food.  Government is like onto the Lord himself, able to pour Mana down onto them. In fact no one needs to toil. Things will just rain down on them.

Which probably would still have gotten approved (I know how much you guys love chewtoys) except for the very last paragraph about how he/she/it had a friend being taken care of by some sort of socialist national health boondoggle who “would have died inn the US, since she’s unemployed and doesn’t have insurance.”

I’m sick and tired of this article of faith on the part of various Europeans. We keep telling them it has happened to no one EVER in the US. In fact, most of our ICU beds etc. are taken up by people who not only can’t pay, but who aren’t even citizens or even legal residents of this country. In fact, a great part of why healthcare is so expensive in the US is that we treat anyone who crawls over the border, no matter what medieval diseases they’re carrying.

At one time, when my then nom the blog (took her out in the woods, shot her in the head. She was threatening to take over. Never name a thing) was on some site, I think Free Republic, we discovered that a bunch of Europeans commenting believed this, and we started yannking their legs.  I think we were all the way up to “live in a cardboard box, in the middle of the highway, drink a cup of cold poison, polish the dirt” before they started SUSPECTING we were pulling their legs.

It’s not their only bit of insanity, mind you.  A good number of them — despite the fact that their own mental health policy has saddled them with the same issue — believe our homeless are homeless because there are no jobs, and no charity organization will look after them. Instead of mentally ill people who resist or are refused treatment, criminals, and people with substance abuse problems. (Or some overlap of all three.)

And we won’t even get into the fact they believe our crime is much, much worse than theirs.  For that I blame Hollywood, mostly, because I remember believing the same. it was still a surreal experience to sit in a Portuguese shop whose windows had medieval-thickness iron bars, in a country where even nice houses in good areas have bars on windows and tall walls, and have the shopkeeper tell me — back then living in Colorado Springs, downtown, and often forgetting to lock my car or my front door, and more than once accidentally leaving my purse in the car for a couple of days, with no untoward incident — that America seemed like a lovely country, but she didn’t want to live with that much crime.

But those at least are not part of government propaganda. The health care thing is. I’ve caught programs while I’m visiting about how bad healthcare is in the US and how, without nationalized health, they’d be left to die, like in America.

Now, I have been watching Foyle’s war, and the last season they crawl up an ideological hole and die there.  The first episode is about how much NHS was needed, and how people were just left to die if they didn’t have money, and–

I have no idea. England right after the war was a strange place, and I can’t say I’m proficient.  Maybe it was true.

But I know what they say about the US and all my hackles rose.  Besides, I know that in Portugal in the 60s for those not covered by Universal health (long story) healthcare was expensive as heck. My parents often say that they could have built another house, twice as large, for the money they spent taking care of my various ailments and pulling me through childhood. I believe them, though most of the “being rushed to the hospital to be given oxygen” was before the age of 6 and therefore fuzzy.  However my parents who were more or less broke, were never turned away at the hospital (save that I was denied incubator space, which honestly I think it’s because I could have messed their statistics.)

I know they sometimes went into debt, and paid it off, but were never turned away.

So I have serious doubts about the heartlessness of pre NHS British hospitals. I mean, it’s possible, the past being another country and all, but at this point I’m not even sure we could find out if it was true. Because all sources have pretty much been corrupted.

But still, you might ask why a program in the 20tens (I don’t remember the exact time) needs to harp on how much NHS was needed, how bad things were before.  And why the continuous barrage of “if you were in the US you’d be dead,” even though it’s not in any way shape or form true. AND why they feel the need to come to OUR blogs and tell us that, as though, you know, if we were dropping like flies we wouldn’t know it?

The answer is simple, and what I shouted at the TV “at last pre-NHS no one actively prevented you getting treatment, if you could get the money.”

I.e. the more their system circles the drain, the more they feel the need to invent “how bad it was before stories.”

But our reasons to oppose a universal payer system are very simple. Besides the obvious throttling of innovation, besides all other issues, there is ALWAYS the main problem (which has infected some of the US system since Obamacare.)

If you’re not paying your own way, you’re not an asset, you’re a liability.

I.e. in the US if you come in even without money, if you agree to pay for treatment, you’re an asset. Eventually, you’ll pay (over three years, completely broke us paid 20k for first son’s delivery bill.) They will do what they can to take care of you because, ultimately, you’re taking care of them. The doctors are not slaves. They’re being paid for their work. It might be delayed, but they’re being paid.

OTOH when you are part of an universal system, you become “one more liability.”  “Sure we can save this person with marginal health, but they’ll just get sick again and cost us more money. I say we put them in the (what was it?) Liverpool (?) pathway. Humane death for them, no more trouble for us.”

Now for those idiots who want free housing, free college, free everything: the same inexorable logic applies to all of it.

When you are reliant on society to provide everything you need, you’re a liability to society.  You are going to be evaluated in terms of what you cost versus what you can give.

Imagine that, if you will.  How much can you give back in terms of creating houses or degrees or whatever for others, as you age?  And if you’re just receiving from everyone, why should they give you the best/keep you around?

Honestly, it’s easier to believe that tasty, tasty Euros will feed the Europeans through the winter ahead than to believe that society is going to love you and look after you in every possible way through a useless (or merely expensive) lifetime.

The reason socialism/communism always kills, either slow (no births, euthanasia, etc) or fast (the mass graves of communist dictatorships) is that in the end humans become ciphers in an endless accounting book.

And beyond those who love us and whom we love, all of are, after all, a lot less trouble and expense when dead.

So the all caring state ultimately makes sure each of its subjects gets to the grave fast enough not to cost too much.

And that is what the “free shit” brigade here and in Europe should think about.
Not that they will, since they don’t know history. And thus, as Heinlein pointed out, have neither past nor future.

*So, what surprised me about this post: other than the fact that it’s still pretty much on point for what we need to do, is that now the left is helping us, by accellarating innovation and shutting down the institutions they took lifetimes crawling through.  Not that they think it’s what they’re doing. We have an entire briar patch situation going on.  And yet, they ARE helping us, and it’s a great opportunity to shape the future.  You know, it’s time. Go to work. Now. – SAH*

Arise, You Sons Of Martha – A Blast From the Past From November 2012

First, let me explain that right now my reading is full of French Revolution, for the second book of The Earth Revolution: Through Fire. Second that I have a cousin who was raised in France.  His parents came back briefly to see if they could establish themselves in Portugal when I was nine and he was three.  (It was a forlorn hope, and they went back and only came back to Portugal when he was in his twenties.  Fortunately for them he married a Portuguese woman and so they have the family nearby.)

Anyway, for that year, while his parents went back and forth to France to do legal stuff, he lived with us almost full time.  Among his accomplishments at three was the ability to sing the full La Marseillese.  The song impressed me immensely with its opening “Allons Enfants de la Patrie.”

The verse translated as “Arise” (or less grandiloquently) “Come on” “Children of the Fatherland.”

Of course, in English it has a very off-putting sound and for Americans it makes no sense at all.  This land is not our fatherland.  It might have molded our people, starting with showing the Pilgrims that if you don’t work you’ll die, but it’s not been the place where our DNA culled, filtered and mixed for thousands of years.

Anyway, this all came to me while reading Roger L. Simon’s rather dispirited article after the election, where he more or less says it’s all done, we’re no longer a center-right country.

As much as I like Roger, I’ll beg to disagree.  Even if that were true, we wouldn’t be a center-right country by less than one percentage point.  And if after more than fifty years of school indoctrination, media control, entertainment filtering, the left has only that advantage, it means at the very least that we’re a people with a hard head and that most of us find the way out of the plantation sooner or later.  This is confirmed by the fact that what gave the victory to Obama was the legions of (unemployed) under thirty years old.  These are people who, like him, are ignorant of business and the facts of life (I don’t mean sex.  That they know as much as previous generations, though they think they invented it.)  To him his rhetoric, the cooked unemployment numbers, the whole nonsense of needing more time because it was so bad makes sense.  They haven’t broken out of indoctrination yet.  And a lot of them want to be part of what they perceive as the “cool kids” (which at that age inevitably is the ones that curse more, have tattoos and have no visible means of sustenance.)  Most of them will grow up.  But the age group will be replaced by yet more indoctrinated youth.

Which means Roger is right about the causes: we must take back education, entertainment/arts, and the news.

I’m not sure he’s right about the solution.  His idea is that we need to go back, infiltrate, start our own long march through the institutions.

I have two problems with that.  The first is that it’s been tried.  Roger, as a recent convert, might not be aware of this, but the right didn’t give up on these fields.  Some of us even tried to infiltrate them by doing what we called “stealthing”  (which can be defined as “walk like one of them until you’re secure.”)

I still have acquaintances and friends (some of whom would surprise you) doing just that.

There are two problems with this approach – one is that the left, being a mystery religion, has so many signs, counter signs and symbols that it’s very hard to imitate the whole unless you believe it OR want to bring about their result.  The second is that they demand constant tests of loyalty.  It’s rather like infiltrating a criminal organization.

I might flatter myself that I had as good a chance as any, with my background, but I couldn’t do it.  Art is to a great extent a thing of the subconscious and things broke through without my meaning.  I also wouldn’t undertake the tests of loyalty, such as writing a book on how America had ruined my life.

The right let themselves be infiltrated because at some level the right had bought the left was the future.  It wasn’t that the people coming in weren’t obvious, it was that their bosses shrugged and sighed and said “Apres nous le deluge.”  Which left us in this fine mess. But the left thinks we’re evil.  They fight our infiltration with all strength.

The other objection to the scheme is that all of those fields are falling apart.  I think Hollywood lives, these days, mostly on foreign sales.  Part of it is that entertainment and the news are creating product no one wants.  (Which means I’m convinced that most people are still center right – where it counts.  Their wallets.  A lot of them just don’t consider themselves political and still buy what “everybody says” – never mind, the tribulation that’s coming will fix that.)

The other thing that’s hitting these fields is a wave of technological innovation that demands they adapt and innovate, something they’re UNABLE to do.

All of us in writing have watched with almost awe as again and again the publishing establishment balks the challenge and tries to force things back somehow to “business as usual.”

And this is because they can’t do otherwise.  It’s not in their makeup.

This is not cheap pop psychology.  It’s merely the result of how people become hard left, or anything to the right of Lenin.  Hard to center left don’t have to do anything.  They’re the good boys and girls.  They receive “wisdom” in the schools and they know by parroting it they’ll go far.  They never doubt, never stray, never go out on a limb.

I’m not saying they’re dumb.  Some of them are brilliant.  Some of them are even true artists and their product gives their spoutings the lie because their subconscious knows better than they do.

I mean, they are more creatures of the group.  Social approval is important.  They never strayed.

So their ability to innovate is limited to “improving on how things are done.”  When faced with the type of catastrophic change hitting  those three fields right now, they are flabbergasted and most of their reaction amounts to hands over ears and screaming lalalalalala.

Then there’s us.  If I had a dime for each conservative who starts with “I used to be liberal, but—“  Now the left trolls try to mimic this with “I am a lifelong republican” and that’s bs, and we all know it, because that’s not how things work.  But we all start more or less liberal, at least those of us under 60.

Heck, I was always anti-communist, but I didn’t understand why guns shouldn’t be regulated or why we shouldn’t have universal health care, or why–   Heinlein cured me, though it was a slow cure.

For most of us, coming to our present beliefs involved one or more Damascus Road moments.  (For those of other traditions, that was when St. Paul on his way to persecute Christians met with the resurrected Christ and changed completely – and no, I’m not as pious as I sound.  I was raised in a country where Catholicism is a course from elementary through High School, though full disclosure, my dad got me dispensation in High School because the priest who taught it couldn’t put up with my arguments anymore. He was a liberation theologist and I’m not a good person.)

A Damascus Road experience of the political kind involves suddenly trying to integrate an event or a circumstance that just won’t fit your mental map, being unable to, and then starting to examine all your received wisdom until you realize it’s all – or most of it a lie.  (I’ve had three, and yes, 9/11 was one of them.)

It involves walking around for about a year, wondering if you’ve gone completely insane, because “everybody knows” and yet…  And yet you can no longer believe it.  This gives you an impression of brokenness and loss of faith.

Those of us who survive it and stay the course are independent cusses.  People who are independent cusses socially tend to be creative too.  Or at least we are so far out of the box that we can’t find it.

This makes it easier for us to adapt when catastrophic change sets in.  And because the status quo establishment hates us, we HAVE in self defense to take to the new tech.

We’ve been doing so.  In droves.

However, Roger L. Simon is right and it’s not enough.

It’s not enough because the inmates just got four more years to run the asylum.  And with tech and society changing as fast as they are, these people have set the course to the 1930s, this time with more bizarre multiculti which also endangers us from abroad.

Guys, this ship is going to go aground and go aground HARD.  My friend Charles says that he doesn’t know what happens when a democracy implodes, but we do know: Empire.  Yeah, it’s possible that by being a different type of democracy we won’t get it, but I think it’s more likely we’ll just get a different type of Empire.  (Which, BTW, Soviet Russia WAS.)

We don’t have time to wait for them to die off and us to replace them.  IF we can keep the republic, we must accelerate this buggy.

Hence the title, which is actually from a Kipling poem, The Sons of Martha.  Again, if you don’t want to click through, it’s based on the New Testament story of Martha and Mary sisters of Lazarus, who are entertaining Jesus and his disciples.  Martha is bringing out the food and doing all the work while Mary sits and listens.  It’s in there to illustrate the difference between active and contemplative devotion, but that’s not important right now.  The important part is that Kipling picked up the tale and wrote a poem to extoll those who do real things in society: engineering, creating…

I think most of those who call themselves Sons of Martha in modern times are Engineers or scientists.  BUT it extends further.  They’re everyone who creates – everyone who works hard, breaks the mold, brings forth innovation.

We’re the sons and daughters of Martha.  And we must take up our heritage.

There’s not much point infiltrating the dying model.  It’s difficult, if not impossible.  It stains the soul, till you don’t know who you are.  And in the end there isn’t enough time for that.

But just playing with the new model isn’t enough.  We must consciously and vigorously push the new model forward in all ways possible.

I’ll propose some points, upon which you may enlarge at will and pass on to your several groups, which will enlarge them and in turn bring them back to us.

1 – Entertainment:

TV/movies: there is STARTING to be stuff on youtube that can compete with the commercial stuff.  This is not my arena, I don’t know what to do, other than wish I were twenty years younger and had time to learn animation.  The tech for that to be a solo thing is almost there but not quite.  However, this is not my area.  Those of you who are in the field, look to it, and come up with ways to go indie.

Books: Yes, I know tons of us do that, but a lot of us do it almost passively because it’s there.  Well, it’s time to put teeth in it. Accelerate, innovate, improve.  Let your beliefs through without preaching.  Write more.  Write better.  LEARN covers.  Help each other.  Make the traditional stuff look like the gray goo it is. Go.

Games: Those of you who know enough to supervise a team, create a pitch, put it on Kickstarter, see if you get enough to hire a team to make the games for you.  Again – GO, you have work to do.

2- News:

We have pundits aplenty.  Here and there a bit of news breaks through.  BUT believe it or not journalism is a craft, even if not practiced any longer.  There are ways to gather, test and filter news.  I was trained for it so long ago that it’s useless now.  At any rate, I think I’m more of the integrator/pundit.  Though I wouldn’t mind knowing how to do it.  If any of you know, teach the others.  Let’s start a blog or more of news-gatherers and (local) reporters.

We NEED that.  And if you have a face made for TV (well, let me lose another fifty pounds.  Am losing again, on new hormonal regime.  I MIGHT be presentable, unless all my skin sags and stuff… :-P ) do your news in video format.  Make it professional.  GO.

3- Education.  I confess here, I expected to have more time and for tech to develop more.  It’s there, it’s coming, I expected my grandkids to be learning at home/online/self directed.

We won’t have that time.  Some of the entertainment and news have to cover for education.  I’m thinking a YA detective series set during the American revolution might help…  YA romances might help too.  (I don’t think YA erotica helps anything, but maybe I’m a prude.  But there’s sweet-romance, i.e. without sex, and let’s admit it, 11 yo girls dream of their wedding and the great love.  There’s a market there.)

However, for parents like me who can be home with the kids but lacked the time to properly homeschool, we need … Online homeschooling leagues?  Online schools?  Online resources that can help de-indoctrinate kids who went to public school.

We need this, and we need it to be good.  My expertise in the field is now so rusty as to be useless.  At best I can glimpse what it SHOULD be.  But there are many of you with training and expertise.  It is your duty, for the sake of our republic, to figure this out, get together, form groups, explore forms, work like h*ll and create serious competition to the state’s indoctrination machines.  Now GO!  You have work to do.

If we succeed this might be the weirdest revolution of mankind, but it WILL be a revolution.

Arise, Sons and Daughters of Martha.  Our only chance to keep our republic is to claim our individuality and work around the stifling government that would herd us back to the nineteen thirties.

Go.  Innovation is in your blood.  Creation is your heritage.  Claim it proudly.

Be not afraid.  Go forth and bring us the future.

See this:  Longer Lockdowns Associated with Much Worse Economic Outcomes.

And this: How Did Spending on Health Care Plunge During a Pandemic?

And definitely this:  The Virus Doesn’t Care about Your Policies.

Now we know — of course we do — that our “elites” aren’t smarter or more competent than the rest of us.  In fact since the intellectual and… credential-granting elites in this country have been taken over by the socialists at least 4 generations, we’re suffering from the socialist 4th generation rot that comes from hiring, promoting and giving accolades based on ideological purity, instead of merit.  To put it mildly, most of these people couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel.

Though of course, some of the more competent older generations remain.

At any rate, we know they’re a bunch of incompetents, blinded by their Marxist cult. But–

But even for them this bizarre bonfire of destruction of global wealth and American wealth (Europe did worse than us out of this. People are already starving in third world countries. America, as usual is doing better. We probably won’t starve. But it’s going to be a mighty close shave most places in this country. And if you want to know how much wealth is being destroyed daily — not reported — look at people whose businesses are closing, or take a stroll through stuff like craigslist or letgo for your area.  I’ve never, not even in the depth of Obamanomics saw so many households in the “free” section, with “have to move.”  Yeah. People have to move when their livelihood is taken away.

So…. what is with the entire world jumping on the “let’s burn everything and destroy wealth” bandwagon when it was not only completely unproven, but it’s been obvious for two or three months now it does nothing?

I’ve been watching Foyle’s war. I think the last time there was this kind of wealth destruction, immiseration and destruction of the links between people, or civil liberties and free market was during WWII.

Nota bene. Every time that communism has been imposed, it is after this type of disruption. More importantly, every time that socialism, like what grips Europe and has a foothold here, was imposed on societies, it was in the wake of this type of disruption.  Even FDR needed the Great Depression, which he worsened and prolonged.

Also note that from the fitful and incoherent revolt in France, to the voting going against them in England, to even German farmers rebelling against their globalist Green Slavery masters.

The peasants had to be put in their place, but how? They need to realize how much they need their benevolent masters. They need to be convinced socialism and internationalism and the power of the state are their only salvation.

Well, they had great hopes Trump would start a war, with their needling countries everywhere to oppose us. That didn’t happen, and at any rate, they weren’t sure it could cause fast and vast destruction. After all, Trump has shown an ability to actually govern that Obama never had.  Oh, yeah, Obama did his best to destroy world economy and convince the ungrateful peasants socialism was the only salvation. He’s still trying, but the little man who wasn’t there was about as good for their purposes as for everything else, except enriching himself.

Thereby they — it remains to be known if China was the mastermind or implicated. Judging from Dr. Fauci’s ties to the Wuhan lab, I believe so. Though it’s hard to say which is the dog and which the tail — started the psy-ops operation we know as the Covid-19 crisis.

They leveraged the power they had remaining: mass media. And they kept people tied to it with lockdowns. And they convinced people to let the government dictate whom they can associate with, under what circumstances, and whether or not they can earn/make a living.

And it worked, so far. Magnificently.

How does it go from here? Well, ignore the riots. They are not the revolution. They’re kabuki theater.

As we all know Cassandra didn’t get half the kicking around she deserved.  However, my prediction is that they’ll largely unlock in September. Then when the normal colds and flu start, they’ll all be Covid-19, and they’ll slam us in lockdown again. And people will go along “out of consideration for their neighbors.”

And then, regardless of who wins the elections, by the end of next year, they’ll have a nation of beggars. Beggars who — they think — will be ready to take the yoke of their redeeming socialism again.

They forget several things, including the fact that socialism really is NOT new and untried. And that this crisis was so obviously ginned up that people know. Enough people — I think — remember and will remember.

Also, although these are the plans of second and third generation socialists, the ones executing them are fourth generation. Again, not able to pour piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the heel.

I’m going to guess it will all go sour on them, and what results will be nothing like international socialism.

But with all that, given the people who think the way out of international nationalism is national socialism, those who think that the opposite of forcing women and minorities into upper positions is forcing them into lower, those who think that the opposite of caste system is a different caste system, just because they will lose, it doesn’t mean we immediately win.

What it means is that they’re going to make things hard, very hard for those of us who thirst for freedom.

These next few years will be centuries long for all of us. And I don’t know how many of us see the end of this.

It is as they used to say, “cultural and social forces.”  It’s not quite, but there is a reason that the crash is coming now. Several reasons, including the fact that the new tech doesn’t favor them, and that they’re suffering form 4th generation rot.

It is just our luck to live at this time. It is also our privilege.

Prepare. Resist. Real resistance, not the usual leftist theater. Protest. Spread the word of what this is all about. Make predictions, over and again.

And in September, make whatever final preparations you can, for yourself and those you can help.

We — any of us — might not make it to the end of this mess. But–

But our beliefs will.  And that’s the other thing: make your kids competent. Make sure. Make sure they work for everything, make sure they learn and work. Make sure.

Because in the end we win, they lose. It’s already started. But it’s neither going to be easy nor simple.

We’re in this because they’re losing. But they’re going to put us through hell on the way there.

Well–  And why not? Someone has to fight back.

Head up. be not afraid!

Book Promo

*Note these are books sent to us by readers/frequenters of this blog.  Our bringing them to your attention does not imply that we’ve read them and/or endorse them, unless we specifically say so.  As with all such purchases, we recommend you download a sample and make sure it’s to your taste.  If you wish to send us books for next week’s promo, please email to bookpimping at outlook dot com. If you feel a need to re-promo the same book do so no more than once every six months (unless you’re me or my relative. Deal.) One book per author per week. Amazon links only. Oh, yeah, by clicking through and buying (anything, actually) through one of the links below, you will at no cost to you be giving a portion of your purchase to support ATH through our associates number. I ALSO WISH TO REMIND OUR READERS THAT IF THEY WANT TO TIP THE BLOGGER WITHOUT SPENDING EXTRA MONEY, CLICKING TO AMAZON THROUGH ONE OF THE BOOK LINKS ON THE RIGHT, WILL GIVE US SOME AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR PURCHASES MADE IN THE NEXT 24HOURS, OR UNTIL YOU CLICK ANOTHER ASSOCIATE’S LINK. PLEASE CONSIDER CLICKING THROUGH ONE OF THOSE LINKS BEFORE SEARCHING FOR THAT SHED, BIG SCREEN TV, GAMING COMPUTER OR CONSERVATORY YOU WISH TO BUY. That helps defray my time cost of about 2 hours a day on the blog, time probably better spent on fiction. ;)*

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“Piper Blackwell is a smart and capable small-town sheriff, a thoroughly modern woman who leads a colorful cast of characters in this entertaining read. Well-crafted and suspenseful, THE DEAD OF JERUSALEM RIDGE adroitly threads the needle between Cozy, Procedural, and Action-Thriller. Jean Rabe’s fans⸺both old and new⸺won’t want to miss this one.⸺ Baron R. Birtcher, multi-award winner, and LA Times Bestselling author

“Rabe once again mixes the most colorful parts of a cozy mystery with the grittiness of suspense in THE DEAD OF JERUSALEM RIDGE, launching Piper Blackwell into the most personal, and potentially heartbreaking, intrigue of her career. Don’t start this story if you need to be up early the next morning!”⸺Janet Walden-West, GRW Maggie winner and author of The South Beach series

“Jean Rabe weaves a deceptively staid tempo of a tale in this new Sheriff Piper Blackwell novel that barrels into a starkly taut murder mystery. The main plot, supported by a riveting subplot, is masterly crafted with an intriguing cast of characters, a unique setting, and an ending that feels like a double sucker punch!”⸺Khaled Talib, author of the highly praised thriller, Gun Kiss

THE DEAD OF JERUSALEM RIDGE had me hooked from page 1. The characters were so real it felt like they could walk right off the page. Warning, once you start it’s next to impossible to stop reading until you reach the perfectly-crafted ending.⸺Angela Crook, author of Fat Chance and Chasing Navah.

(I want to point out after months of reading only Jane Austen Fanfic this series got me to read it. (Yes, I “read” other stuff, but it was audio books.)  I don’t know if it will last, but a series needs to be grabby to get me out of the P & P sinkhole at this point – SAH)

FROM MARY CATELLI:  The Wolf and the Ward.

A wolf wanders the land. . . .

Charity had thought it dreadful, being sent like a package to a man who might refuse to take her on as a ward. But when a wolf comes to look her up and down in the woods, and the man she is sent to greets her, making her wonder if she remembers something that never happened, she finds that there are problems far worse than that in the duchy.

FROM PAM UPHOFF:  Warrior At Large (Wine of the Gods Book 52).

Ice is back, and back in trouble! Fired from the Directorate, he’s working three part time jobs, and tripping over problems that a Warrior of the One can’t ignore. Spies from other Worlds and corrupt politicians is just the start

And with no one ordering him around, he’s free to deal with problems his way.

FROM CEDAR SANDERSON: The Violet Mouse.

Trust me.
There are things in the lab no-one ever talks about.
Risk everything.
How far would you go to save a friend’s last hope?

Three friends, one fateful conversation. You can’t let your closest friends do something drastic, not if you can help it. When one of you has a a brilliant mind, another is a skeptic, and the last one is willing to be a guinea pig… should you stop them?

A short story.

FROM R D MEYER: Schism.

A single spark. That’s all it takes to ignite an explosion if the conditions are right.

Today in America, conditions are right for an inferno to engulf our nation. We no longer discuss; we screech. We no longer tolerate; we cancel. We no longer agree to disagree; we end relationships that have lasted years. In short, American society is on the edge of an explosion.

Schism is about all of our anger, all of our political rage, coming to the surface in a Second American Civil War. However, this one doesn’t divide us by northern states and southern states, but rather by liberals and conservatives, urban and rural, reds and blues. Spurred on by blog posts, news reports, and protests each side seems to participate in more out of opposition to the other side than any real principle, conditions for the spark grow more and more precarious, priming the pump of hate.

Beginning as what seems like a black and white case of terrorism, events morph into a political struggle over who steers the reins of power. One man seeking justice for his family spins out of control and drags our nation into the abyss while the loyalties of friends, neighbors, and even families are tested against the partisan rancor that pervades society.

Once events explode into a self-sustaining fire, cities burn. Journalists from varying outlets are executed for everyone to see. Power plants are shuttered to cut off each side from the energy our country has become so dependent on. And the whole time, as America is paralyzed in a struggle with itself, an ambitious military officer watches from across the ocean…

WRITING CHALLENGE

*For some reason I still don’t have a word for the challenge. Eh.

Write the opening two paragraphs of a story OR a two paragraph novel blurb based on THIS picture. SAH*